IGN's Top 10

[CheckD3]

The OP certainly hasnt played half life 2 on the pc...

It's my fault that I played it on a console? I find it incredibly hard to justify a game's relevance and "goodness" based on whether it's played on a console or a PC. If it's a good game, it won't matter whether it's on console or PC.

I agree. A good game doesn't matter if it's played on a console or PC. I think Half life 2 is a good game, and still one of the best of the decade, but it really doesn't matter what it's played on. To a point. Some games are easier to use with the keyboard and mouse of a PC, but that's just utilizing the controls given.

It hasn't really brought much to the table besides online, but because it sold well and has been able to make money, people pull ideas from it, like health bars, how many FPSs actually have health bars anymore. Remember how hard it was to survive with no health? Halo just made gaming a little easier with the regenerating health that brought so much in that other games use it themselves

If the list was based on pure popularity, it would be in the top 5, if not the top 3, but in pure quality, I think it doesn't match up to the top 10 quality games

O, quality. I thought it was best based on several different qualities, such as innovation and gameplay length.

What did Halo bring to gaming that wasn't done before? I remember thinking about Halo, and couldn't find anything that it's done that is new and exciting, again, online multiplayer is the only thing that I think kept it alive. The story isn't super unique and innovative, shooting is still the same and weapons are standard human weapons with alien counterparts, and the AI isn't all that super...so I'm failing to see the innovation. It's not a horrible game, by any means, but it's just, average, done before, I still think it's success rides on the first game being huge online with multiplayer, and that carried over.

 

[Solid Snake2053]

The OP certainly hasnt played half life 2 on the pc...

How does playing it on PC make it better? And don't say graphics, because super, ultra intense graphics with awful gameplay and story does not a good game make.

 

[AWAR]

The OP certainly hasnt played half life 2 on the pc...

It's my fault that I played it on a console? I find it incredibly hard to justify a game's relevance and "goodness" based on whether it's played on a console or a PC. If it's a good game, it won't matter whether it's on console or PC.

The OP certainly hasnt played half life 2 on the pc...

How does playing it on PC make it better? And don't say graphics, because super, ultra intense graphics with awful gameplay and story does not a good game make.

Nope thats wrong.Its an entirely different game on the pc, leave aside all the mods.
Half life is a fast paced game which can only achieve its full potential only when played on pc and in a high difficulty.

 

[Carnagath]

Imho every gaming journalist who does not include Demon's Souls in their top 10 list needs to receive a Code Red, Colonel Jessup style, ASAP.

 

[Solid Snake2053]

Nope thats wrong.Its an entirely different game on the pc, leave aside all the mods.
Half life is a fast paced game which can only achieve its full potential only when played on pc and in a high difficulty.[/quote]

Well...that doesn't necessarily say why you feel it's better on PC. You can play on the higher difficulty on the console. But I mean, if you love the game you love it that's fine. I just find that F.E.A.R has more intense combat and is far more fast paced than Half LIfe.

 

[Plurralbles]

I must have missed something here.

KOTOR is overrated.
Okami is overrated.
Grand Theft Auto was innovative, but ultimately overrated.

Where is WoW?
Where is Halo: Combat Evolved?
Where is Call of Duty 4?

These are 3 of the most influential games of the decade, and they get shunned. I know I know, opinion is opinion, yada yada.

Okami is balls easy and had a horribly slow start, but i found every single character in the game memorable and endearing. The game was actually... fun. The celestial brush was an interesting mechanic. The lack of voice acting and going the zelda route with text even in its day and age was something to applaud.

And Call of duty 4 can only be on one list, and that's, "most popular" not best.

 

[Dungus]

We can all begin nagging about what game should or shouldn't be on there, but why should you care about a website giving praise to games you didn't like? It's not like it's an objective measurement of what game is best, that's impossible.

Lists don't account for anything but the people who made it.

 

[Eggsnham]

I didn't expect to agree with it, and i don't, but is that really a deal? I mean, how could have possibly made a definitive, non-objective (probably not the right word, you know what i mean) list? No-one will be satisfied.
Of course, its equally ludicrous to say that publications shouldn't make such list. Their business is in part to recommend games and identify talent.
My idea: Increase it to 15 top games to account for more error in opinion about 'great' games; and don't rank them, as nothing good will come of saying one game is definitely better than another. Especially if they're two different genres.

The word you're looking for is unbiased

 

[CK76]

I don't get why it matters, what power does a list give something?

No list would satisfy everyone, in fact I'd argue some people would never be satisfied with any list. "You put that ahead of that?" *switch them* "Wait, that is not better than that!"

I mean, look at their film list. That is utterly laughable.

I'm guessing these folks simply never saw Momento, City of God, Spirited Away, Donnie Darko, Lost in Translation, Hotel Rwanda, Capote, Pan's Labyrinth, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Prestige, Children of Men, Million Dollar Baby, This is England, No Country for Old Men, The Pianist, There Will be Blood, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gran Torino, Wall-E, The Wrestler, Hurt Locker, Up, and my best film of the 2000s, The Lives of Others.

That none of these films is deemed better than Spider-Man or 300?

Meh, IGN and a beaver have same level of credibility when it comes to games and films.

 

[Solid Snake2053]

I don't get why it matters, what power does a list give something?

No list would satisfy everyone, in fact I'd argue some people would never be satisfied with any list. "You put that ahead of that?" *switch them* "Wait, that is not better than that!"

I mean, look at their film list. That is utterly laughable.

I'm guessing these folks simply never saw Momento, City of God, Spirited Away, Donnie Darko, Lost in Translation, Hotel Rwanda, Capote, Pan's Labyrinth, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Prestige, Children of Men, Million Dollar Baby, This is England, No Country for Old Men, The Pianist, There Will be Blood, 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gran Torino, Wall-E, The Wrestler, Hurt Locker, Up, and my best film of the 2000s, The Lives of Others.

That none of these films is deemed better than Spider-Man or 300?

Meh, IGN and a beaver have same level of credibility when it comes to games and films.

I agree. I think their opinion was just regarded more highly a while back and now lists like this make us wonder what happened.

 

[oppp7]

The OP certainly hasnt played half life 2 on the pc...

I played it on both and preferred the Xbox version. It's more a matter of opinion. Some people like having more options on their PC but I don't like having to look at what button I'm pressing compared to having all the buttons conveniently located in reach.

No offense but this questions your mental capabilities. The only buttons you would press in half life excluding the mouse are the standard fps buttons (WASD, shift for sprint, ctrl for duck, and space for jump). Is it so damn hard?

I meant the numbers for switching between weapons. The mouse wheel works too, but it's not as fast as console switching.

 

[HollywoodH17]

The OP certainly hasnt played half life 2 on the pc...

It's my fault that I played it on a console? I find it incredibly hard to justify a game's relevance and "goodness" based on whether it's played on a console or a PC. If it's a good game, it won't matter whether it's on console or PC.

The OP certainly hasnt played half life 2 on the pc...

How does playing it on PC make it better? And don't say graphics, because super, ultra intense graphics with awful gameplay and story does not a good game make.

Nope thats wrong.Its an entirely different game on the pc, leave aside all the mods.
Half life is a fast paced game which can only achieve its full potential only when played on pc and in a high difficulty.

Then it's a poor game. I fail to see how a game can change *that much* between PC and a console port, but if you say that it is that different in translation, I have to argue that we're looking at a serious game weakness. Plus, you're also implying that you have bought and played it all the way through on a console; if you haven't, you have no frame of reference.

 

[oppp7]

It hasn't really brought much to the table besides online, but because it sold well and has been able to make money, people pull ideas from it, like health bars, how many FPSs actually have health bars anymore. Remember how hard it was to survive with no health? Halo just made gaming a little easier with the regenerating health that brought so much in that other games use it themselves

If the list was based on pure popularity, it would be in the top 5, if not the top 3, but in pure quality, I think it doesn't match up to the top 10 quality games

O, quality. I thought it was best based on several different qualities, such as innovation and gameplay length.

What did Halo bring to gaming that wasn't done before? I remember thinking about Halo, and couldn't find anything that it's done that is new and exciting, again, online multiplayer is the only thing that I think kept it alive. The story isn't super unique and innovative, shooting is still the same and weapons are standard human weapons with alien counterparts, and the AI isn't all that super...so I'm failing to see the innovation. It's not a horrible game, by any means, but it's just, average, done before, I still think it's success rides on the first game being huge online with multiplayer, and that carried over.

Regenerating health, AI that helps you from inside your suit, sticky grenades, armored supersoldiers...

 

[Solid Snake2053]

It hasn't really brought much to the table besides online, but because it sold well and has been able to make money, people pull ideas from it, like health bars, how many FPSs actually have health bars anymore. Remember how hard it was to survive with no health? Halo just made gaming a little easier with the regenerating health that brought so much in that other games use it themselves

If the list was based on pure popularity, it would be in the top 5, if not the top 3, but in pure quality, I think it doesn't match up to the top 10 quality games

O, quality. I thought it was best based on several different qualities, such as innovation and gameplay length.

What did Halo bring to gaming that wasn't done before? I remember thinking about Halo, and couldn't find anything that it's done that is new and exciting, again, online multiplayer is the only thing that I think kept it alive. The story isn't super unique and innovative, shooting is still the same and weapons are standard human weapons with alien counterparts, and the AI isn't all that super...so I'm failing to see the innovation. It's not a horrible game, by any means, but it's just, average, done before, I still think it's success rides on the first game being huge online with multiplayer, and that carried over.

Regenerating health, AI that helps you from inside your suit, sticky grenades, armored supersoldiers...

Dude...sticky grenades are awesome.

 

[BENZOOKA]

I agree with HL2, CS, Fallout 3 and GTA III. Don't know the others that well.

 

[reg42]

I don't get why people love HL2 so much. It's good, sure, but it never really wow'd me.
I mostly agree with the list other than that though.

 

[Sentox6]

It's always interesting how people seem to fall over themselves in the urgent rush to express their subjective opinions as absolutely universal law. "ME2 SUCKS! IT IS A TERRIBLE GAME"

If you think ME2 is a bad game, you are wrong. Not because I think so, but simply because, on a variety of measures (production values, accepted writing archetypes, etc) it is an excellent game. If you don't like ME2, if it's not the sort of game you enjoy, then that's perfectly valid. It's a considerable achievement regardless of one's opinion, however.

Also, the hate for IGN is kind of amusing. It seems to have reached the point where people hate them simply because they're big and therefore evil and corrupt. Anyone been to GameSpot/GameSpy/GameTrailers/etc? Compared to most of the other key reviewers, I agree with IGN's reviews more often. Which also begs the question of why they have to be tarred with one brush? You may not agree with their review of MAG (I, for example, think it was overly generous) but it doesn't mean *everything* they say is invalid. I guess knee-jerk blanket judgments are more fun than reasoned evaluations, though.

Aside from all this talk of opinions, however, wtf is up with all the dislike for HL2? I just can't wrap my head around that one. What are the single-player alternatives? Halo? Modern Warfare? BioShock? F.E.A.R.? Riiiight. If HL2 is a bad game, good games don't exist.

 

[CheckD3]

What did Halo bring to gaming that wasn't done before? I remember thinking about Halo, and couldn't find anything that it's done that is new and exciting, again, online multiplayer is the only thing that I think kept it alive. The story isn't super unique and innovative, shooting is still the same and weapons are standard human weapons with alien counterparts, and the AI isn't all that super...so I'm failing to see the innovation. It's not a horrible game, by any means, but it's just, average, done before, I still think it's success rides on the first game being huge online with multiplayer, and that carried over.

Regenerating health, AI that helps you from inside your suit, sticky grenades, armored supersoldiers...

Regenerating health wasn't innovative, it was something that games started doing so they'd be like Halo. AI helping from inside the suit? You mean someone telling you through an intercom what to do? Pretty sure that's been done. Sticky grenades...that's a tough one, because while yes it's starting to be done more, you might be able to find that in the past in a game that people have passed up, it just brought it to light, so in that sense I can giveyou that one. And armored supsersoldiers? That's not innovative, that's just characters, and I can guarentee that since gaming began, there have to be at least a few games with armored supersoldiers before Halo. What Halo did was bring some of these things to light, taking the basic FPS frame and building it into a (and I'm afraid to start using this word) mainstream game that stays safe and is made for the pure reason of making money.

Everything Halo does has been done before, just not in the same light Halo does it. Plus, being from Microsoft only, and I'm sure was a big release for orginal Xbox owners who had nothing else to call their own, that built the popularity. It's not innovative, just popular, and just because something's popular doesn't mean it's a high quality game, it's just popular

 

[CheckD3]

It's always interesting how people seem to fall over themselves in the urgent rush to express their subjective opinions as absolutely universal law. "ME2 SUCKS! IT IS A TERRIBLE GAME"

If you think ME2 is a bad game, you are wrong. Not because I think so, but simply because, on a variety of measures (production values, accepted writing archetypes, etc) it is an excellent game. If you don't like ME2, if it's not the sort of game you enjoy, then that's perfectly valid. It's a considerable achievement regardless of one's opinion, however.

Also, the hate for IGN is kind of amusing. It seems to have reached the point where people hate them simply because they're big and therefore evil and corrupt. Anyone been to GameSpot/GameSpy/GameTrailers/etc? Compared to most of the other key reviewers, I agree with IGN's reviews more often. Which also begs the question of why they have to be tarred with one brush? You may not agree with their review of MAG (I, for example, think it was overly generous) but it doesn't mean *everything* they say is invalid. I guess knee-jerk blanket judgments are more fun than reasoned evaluations, though.

Aside from all this talk of opinions, however, wtf is up with all the dislike for HL2? I just can't wrap my head around that one. What are the single-player alternatives? Halo? Modern Warfare? BioShock? F.E.A.R.? Riiiight. If HL2 is a bad game, good games don't exist.

P.S.: "AI that helps you from inside your suit" isn't a feature. It's just a disembodied voice-over.

It all depends on the type of games people play. If someone is an online player who favors those games, they probably won't like the single player games like HL2 and such. If someone is a RPG fan, or has a fetish for the sandbox games, that FPS games or liniar games are like the spawn from hell for them.

It really is impossible to get a true best of list. The most accurate would be 3 parts. A collective grouping of all company reivews, with an average score from at least 100 reviews if not more from a large variety of groups. The 2nd part would be the copies sold vs time out, because good games usually will sell. As I said, a game that sells 1.5 million in 5 years and 1.4 million in 2 years is a huge diffence. But taking into that will also be the price of games, the economy overall of the world and ect. Regions would also take factor. The final and both most needed but also lowest outcome would be popularity. Normally, quality games can be popular. It's needed because there are games out there that are 1 game that was so good that a sequel would kill it, or games that sequels were better and more popular. So fan base would count for about 25% of the votes for game. Another 35% would be the reviews and the last % would be the sales, because good games normally sell well. But it's a complex system that's near impossible to get done in time for something else to take over or make the games stale in gamers minds. Though really good games stay fresh over all times

 

[Weaver]

Half-life 2 is my favorite FPS game ever created. I think you all have poor taste
It had great characters, great level design, amazing atmosphere and variation AND an actual story that was well written. The shooting mechanics were solid, the enemies were fun to kill and it was just a great game.

If you played it on a console... I pity you for having to suffer through a game that really shouldn't have been ported. Joysticks do this game no justice.